Have you checked if you're up to speed on the relationship milestone timeline? Don't worry - it's there to 'reassure' you

Think military role-play in the bedroom, but expanded into every part of your relationship

"In just a few short months, I can reveal an imperfection" (Rex)

Falling in love is such an intangible, indescribable and deeply personal feeling that you can now compare it with other couples’ experiences on a handy relationship milestone timeline.

Match.com has documented the average time it takes us to fall in love, and the milestones that come with it, based on research involving around 2,000 people. And now it’s time, in the words of the Daily Mail, to check whether your relationship is “on track”.

So, what does it show? Well, we fall in love after five months of dating, get engaged after two years and have a family within four years - and a lot of milestones fall around the six-month mark (leaving a toothbrush at your significant other’s place, and getting a drawer to keep your things in there as well – not to mention “revealing an imperfection” and letting your boyfriend see you without your make-up on).

You can also use the timeline to check when you should start holding hands with your significant other, update social media relationship statuses, meet each other’s family and friends, and first get undressed with the lights on in front of one another (if it’s only been a month, keep those switches turned off, ladies.)

A spokeswoman for Match.com said that we’re often reassured by hearing about the progress of others’ relationships, and that their findings can be used for that reassurance as well as help us to adjust our expectations if we’re not on schedule.

In other words, you can take the most inexplicable, illogical phenomenon, and turn it into a comparable, measurable, definable exercise. Think military role-play in the bedroom, but expanded into every part of your relationship.

Love, however, is not admin. Comparisons get us into dangerous places, and feeling obliged to behave a certain way or commit to something because of societal expectations will almost always end in heartbreak.

Comparing any aspect of our lives is a quick way to feeling bad about ourselves. If you take longer than five months to fall in love, or you’ve been together way past the getting-engaged deadline, feeling like your relationship must be doomed will no doubt become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps you can’t afford that all-important holiday abroad at 298 days. Or perhaps babies aren’t on your timeline at all, and financial restrictions mean you’ll never buy a home together.

Unsurprisingly, the timeline has led to a flurry of headlines about what’s normal in a relationship. “Wait five months before you tell her you love her,” one publication advises. And then maybe wait another few months before you break the news that you let an article dictate the terms of your relationship.

Our lives take shape amid the detritus of ticked-off new years’ resolutions, discarded to-do lists, existential conversations and job applications.

We love being in control, and so we should. But control is the antithesis to love. There’s a lot of admin to be had when looking for love in the modern world, and often online dating can be a numbers game. But when we find it, that’s where the thinking should stop.

Yes, your desire to become a parent may be getting stronger. You might want a steady partner and a seaside townhouse painted blue to call your own (just me?). But forcing your feelings to fit a timeframe won’t get you there any sooner.

Of course, it’s natural to be curious about other people’s relationships. But the amount of time it takes you to leave a toothbrush at your partner’s is more of a reflection on your oral hygiene than anything else. Worrying that your own partnership isn’t quite up to speed according to a dating company’s study really, really isn’t worth the aggro.